Monthly Archives: May 2011

The department has reduced its administrative costs by nearly 10 per cent over the past two years, said Dave Leclerc, a spokesperson for Education Minister Line Beauchamp.

This year alone it means 45 fewer bureaucrats, he said, adding the department has never operated “with so few bureaucrats in its history.”

45 fewer bureaucrats.

10% over the past two years.

???

Exactly how many bureaucrats are there at the the Ministry? And what, pray tell do they do?

Yes, school boards can be top heavy. But the Ministry seems to be an elephant. A massive bureaucracy that serves our students how? By dreaming up “partnership agreements” that schools now sign with their boards? Tell me – how has that improved services to students? Or how has it added yet more bureaucracy at every level, perhaps? That one I can answer.

Before the Minister gets on with her assault on school boards, maybe she should look in her own offices for massive waste – it starts there.

Who better to lead an educational revolution than Joel Klein, the prosecutor who took on the software giant Microsoft? But in his eight years as chancellor of New York City’s school system, the nation’s largest, Klein learned a few painful lessons of his own—about feckless politicians, recalcitrant unions, mediocre teachers, and other enduring obstacles to school reform.